Why my parents sent my brothers to live in North Korea
When filmmaker Yonghi Yang was six, her parents decided to send her three brothers to live in North Korea. The family have lived with the consequences ever since.
Filmmaker Yonghi Yang grew up in Japan in the 1960s, as part of Osaka's large ethnic Korean community. Facing anti-Korean prejudice in Japan, and inspired by the North Korean regime鈥檚 promise of a socialist paradise, her parents made the momentous decision to send their three teenage sons to live in the North Korean capital Pyongyang in the early 1970s, as a sort of "birthday gift" to North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung. Yonghi remained behind with her parents and has spent a lifetime trying to make sense of their decision and its consequences. Yonghi has made films about her experience, the latest is called Soup and Ideology.
Park Myongho is a North Korean ex-military man who defected to the South, at huge risk, with his family. He now works as a compressor diver making a dangerous living by catching octopuses under the sea where North meets South. This interview was first broadcast in January 2019.
Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com
Presenter: Jo Fidgen
(Photo: The Arch of Reunification in Pyongyang, North Korea. Credit: Pablo Bonfiglio via Getty Images)
Last on
More episodes
Previous
Broadcasts
- Tue 30 Nov 2021 12:06GMT大象传媒 World Service
- Tue 30 Nov 2021 18:06GMT大象传媒 World Service except East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa
- Tue 30 Nov 2021 23:06GMT大象传媒 World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
- Wed 1 Dec 2021 03:06GMT大象传媒 World Service
Contact Outlook
Info on how we might use your contribution on air
Podcast: Lives Less Ordinary
Step into someone else鈥檚 life and expect the unexpected